insurance question

In April, we learned that our insurance rates we going to go up for 2009-10. That means an increase of like $90-100 a month to keep my wife and kids on my plan at work (now more than $600 a month total).

So, just a few weeks after we sign on the dotted line locking in our insurance for the year, we learn that our hours are being reduced from 40/week to 37.5/week ... that equals a paycut of 6.25% ... a nice combination...

what gets me is that had they told us about reducing our hours ahead of time, many of us would have re-thought how we approached insurance, either signing up for lower cost plans or in some cases, just gone in search of our insurance and not taken the company's at all ...
We've asked our HR people about the possibility of changing our plans now that our pay has been cut, but they are steadfast in saying that we can't change anything insurance-wise until next year's enrollment period, unless we have a qualifying event (wedding, death, birth of child, etc.) ...

Do we have any recourse in dealing with this? It just feels underhanded in how this was handled, waiting until we signed up for insurance for a year and then dropping the bomb about our hours/pay being cut ... I'm sorry but I don't believe the line about our management not seeing the paycut stuff coming... please...

anyways, just wondering the best way to deal with this, short of taking hostages (kidding of course about that part) ... I really need a way to get my wife and kids off my work plan in favor of something more affordable, which i'm pretty confident we can find...i guess i should have done that to begin with, but we didn't jump on it quickly enough...

HR is probably right about it not being changeable until the next enrollment period. An annual fire drill in my house is when my wife and I wait until the last day of enrollment to pick up the papers and figure out if/what we want to change in our plan.

You probably know this, but if you're shopping for a new plan don't drop the current one until the new one is up and running. Too much tempting fate there. And if you really like the current plan, I wouldn't screw with it even though it is more expensive. Again, you just never know.

Job change is also a qualifying event. Try signing up for a part-time job and see if that qualifies with HR. Or maybe your wife could get a part-time job to qualify for an insurance change. Nothing says you have to keep it.

That's an idea -- i sent them an email this week, asking if there was way to get some relief from the company on the insurance issue (i.e. could we get out of our year-long arrangement if we're able to find insurance for our family for better rates with a private company)... this was part of the response I got this morning:

... The “company” fully understands potential issues faced by employees in light of current economic conditions. After all the “company” is not some faceless, nameless organization, it is “us.”

I personally can attest to implementation of procedures that have affected everyone in the company, top to bottom. Extra work, reduced hours, compensation eliminations in bonuses, and complete job elimination has affected every person, no one excluded. We attempt to humanize the issue by pointing out that 2.5 fewer hours per week is often “a six pack of beer and six packs of cigarettes” in terms of real world impact.

so in other words, "quit whining mr. hourly worker because those measly 2.5 hours lost each week is just throwaway money that you were just going to use for partying anyway ... no, that lost money means maybe my 4-year-old daughter doesn't go to play school this fall or I have to find a part time job to keep my mortgage, pay bills, etc... some people just don't get it ...

If the HR fuck is smoking cigarettes at the rate his memo suggests, he's getting a steal on health insurance that only costs $600 monthly for an entire family.

If the job loss of a spouse is a qualifying event -- because it means less money coming into the household -- I don't understand why an imposed pay cut in the primary breadwinner's salary, after the enrollment period, doesn't count as a qualifying event. Red tape mofos.